Friends, last week we received the following e-mail from some guy who ran afoul of the fine fellows who make up the FPD. The story’s a bit jangled but you’ll get the picture:

Sent: Sunday, February 10, 2013 1:46 PMSubject: FPD

Hi Travis, I was recently arrested by the Fullerton PD. I had a professional recording device on my chest, which was recording for some time before I was stopped. There were 3 camera men and myself. We were basically trying to make a public reaction video. It shortly got out of hand. It was in broad daylight. The officers, myself and the camera man were all at the same intersection… All in plain site. I was eventually taken down, then an officer took my recording device and also an sd card from one of my camera men. I was the only one arrested, even though it was a group activity. I’m being charged with police obstruction, which has resulted in a hold on my employment. I’m also facing 100 days jail time. I’m a full time student and I work two jobs. I have no previous criminal record. No one got hurt, and we explained to the officers, what was going on. I feel like I’m being charged for something that shouldn’t have escalated this far.I also feel that they tampered with the audio… which apparently was 12 minutes long. I haven’t heard any one it.

They went through my cell phone, without any permission…

They didn’t want to give me clean water…

I was shackled and handcuffed, while sitting in a holding cell.

I was held down by multiple officers, while handcuffed. “Claiming I was resisting”

The DA read my case report and was hysterical… The Public Defender was the same way.

“They were joking about it in the court room.” Obviously It was a ridiculous case.I plead not guilty to the charges, and I’m now awaiting the pre-trial.If you have any information for me or any questions, I would appreciate it.

Hmm. Is any part of this story true? Was anything left out? I don’t know, but I’d say the burden of proof now lies squarely on the doorstep of Danny Hughes’ Culture of Corruption.

6. Citizen being prosecuted for getting in the way of the cops. Check.

7. “Truthy” Fullerton cops to be called as witness in order to lock up citizen? Check.

Yes, I do believe I’ve seen this show before, starring Kelly Thomas, Trevor Clarke, Veth Mam, Edward Quinonez, Emanuel Martinez; and of course also the men and women of the Fullerton Police Department.

Good luck, dude. My advice is to go to the next City Council meeting and find out what your Police Oversight Commission can do for you.

The results of the November election mean that the tepid and incompetent reign of Fullerton City Manager Joe Felz and City Attorney Dick Jones will continue as they preside over policies (or lack of policies) meant to evade accountability for your employees and electeds in City Hall.

Acting Chief Danny Hughes, the legacy boss of the FPD Culture of Corruption will soon see his title made permanent, even as the accusations by Ben Lira about Hughes’s direct involvement in cover-up and brutality, continue to swirl.

(No, you will not get a refund in any part for the illegal $27,000,000 tax that City Hall stole from you. But in the larger scheme of things, that’s small change)

I want to talk about justice.

In our State the cops can do damn near anything they want with impunity. Our spineless politicians have given them wealth, influence, and most importantly, virtually no accountability to anyone. The justice system itself, run by District Attorneys surrounded by ex-cops, has little interest in pursuing justice against their own allies, even when this means coddling the very perjuring cops that have scuttled many of the DA’s own cases. And when the cops themselves actually commit crimes, the law enforcement establishment immediately springs into action to defend the indefensible.

Think about what happened to Veth Mam. An innocent man was assaulted, arrested and falsely prosecuted. Fullerton cops knew the real truth and lied under oath to hide the fact that they beat up and arrested the wrong guy. Were there any repercussions? Of course not. Remember the Martinez kid who spent five months in jail thanks to the Fullerton cops? Well, Goodrich said everything was just fine – a slight error. Trevor Clarke says the FPD beat him, gave him a few sadistic “screen tests” just for fun, threw him in jail, and robbed him for good measure. Ben Lira says Danny Hughes was one of the instigators. Will anything happen? Not very likely, is it?

Let’s let the Albert Rincon case be our guide: we know that Albert Rincon serially molested women in the back seat of his patrol car. We know because of the depositions of just two of his victims (there are said to be a dozen). But the obscenity of what occurred, and importantly the roles played by Patdown Pat McKinley and Mike Sellers in covering up the whole mess, and worse, putting the creep back on the streets shall never be known. Why? because there was a settlement; a settlement approved by by-then Councilman McKinley himself.

The lawsuit settlement is the mechanism to hush everything up, from brutal and sadistic cops and an immoral FPD leadership, to a feckless city manager and city attorney who condoned the Culture of Corruption. If you wondered how the FPOA and the FPD/City Hall crowd could share a common goal, this is it.

And the path to settlement is the route no doubt most favored by Garo Mardirossian, the lawyer who is representing a whole slew of FPD/FPOA victims of brutality and perjury. For a lawyer a big payday without having to risk anything is a gift. And co-incidentally the same result will be a gift for Joe Felz, Pat Mckinley, Danny Hughes, Barry Coffman and the rest of the gang.

Your new council majority of Chaffee, Flory and Fitzgerald will make sure that Fullerton returns to the normalcy where no bad deed goes reported.

Of course it won’t be their money that goes to pay off Veth Mam and Kelly Thomas’s relatives. It will be yours.

]]>http://www.fullertonsfuture.org/2012/fall-into-the-gap/feed/183Vote Wisely.http://www.fullertonsfuture.org/2012/vote-wisely/
http://www.fullertonsfuture.org/2012/vote-wisely/#commentsTue, 06 Nov 2012 17:55:32 +0000adminhttp://www.fullertonsfuture.org/?p=34733
]]>http://www.fullertonsfuture.org/2012/vote-wisely/feed/58Vince Mater Gets Wrist Slapped For Destruction of Evidence in Fullerton Jail House Death Casehttp://www.fullertonsfuture.org/2012/mater-gets-wrist-slapped-for-destruction-of-evidence-in-fullerton-jail-house-death-case/
http://www.fullertonsfuture.org/2012/mater-gets-wrist-slapped-for-destruction-of-evidence-in-fullerton-jail-house-death-case/#commentsFri, 02 Nov 2012 03:56:45 +0000Joe Sipowiczhttp://www.fullertonsfuture.org/?p=34691I always hate it when the stooge press indicates that a “former cop” was convicted of something when the former cop was an active cop when he did what he did to get convicted.

And so I won’t say “former Fullerton cop Vincent Mater plead guilty…” Rather, I will say dirty Fullerton cop Vincent Mater who clearly had something to hide in the wake of the Dean Gochenour Fullerton jail suicide and who demonstrated as much by destroying his DAR plead guilty to day…

Here’s the text of the DAs press release:

FULLERTON – A former Fullerton Police Department (FPD) officer was convicted and sentenced today for destroying evidence by crushing his audio-recorder after an inmate committed suicide in jail following a driving under the influence (DUI) arrest by the defendant. Vincent Thomas Mater, 42, pleaded guilty to a court offer by the Honorable Frances Munoz to one misdemeanor count of destruction of evidence and one misdemeanor count of vandalism. Mater was sentenced to three years of informal probation and 60 days of community service. The People objected to the sentence, arguing for jail time based on the nature of the crime, destruction of evidence possibly related to an inmate’s death, and the defendant’s violation of his position of trust.

At the time of the crime, Mater was a police officer with FPD. At approximately 9:45 p.m. on April 14, 2011, Mater conducted a DUI investigation after making a traffic stop of a vehicle being driven without its lights on in the dark. Mater was in uniform and driving a marked FPD patrol car. Mater arrested the driver, Dean Gochenour, upon determining that Gochenour was under the influence of alcohol.

Mater transported Gochenour in his patrol car to the Fullerton City Jail (FCJ) and turned him over to FPD jailers to be booked upon arrival. Throughout the duration of his contact with Gochenour, Mater wore an FPD-issued Digital Audio Recording device (DAR), which was activated and would have audio-recorded any statements made by Mater or Gochenour.

At approximately 11:30 p.m., inmate Gochenour committed suicide by hanging himself in a cell at FCJ. The Orange County District Attorney’s Office (OCDA) was subsequently contacted to conduct the custodial death investigation.

In the hours after Mater learned of Gochenour’s death, Mater destroyed his DAR by crushing it and removing the mother board and circuit board. The audio captured on Mater’s DAR of the defendant’s interaction with Gochenour could not be recovered as a result of the damage. Mater destroyed the evidence that would have been relevant to the OCDA’s custodial death investigation.

FPD investigated the case against Mater regarding the destruction of evidence and submitted it to the OCDA for criminal prosecution.

To read the OCDA’s full report on the custodial death of Gochenour, visit www.OrangeCountyDA.com and select “OCDA Report Custodial Death Investigation – Inmate Dean Gochenour” from the Investigation Letters tab under the Media Center. The report was issued March 13, 2012.

Deputy District Attorney Brock Zimmon of the Special Prosecutions Unit prosecuted this case.

I don’t know who “the honorable” Frances Munoz is, but I sure want to end up in her court if I ever get busted doing anything naughty. Probation and sixty days’ community service? Really? You or I would be looking at hard time. Oh, well we’ve always know there were rules and regs for us and a get out of jail card for the cops.

Did something fishy happen to Dean Gochenour before or after he was deposited in the FPD jail? Thanks to Mater we shall probably never know.

Oh, and yeah, Mater’s now a former Fullerton cop, although whether he was fired or permitted to walk away we will never know. That shall remain a mystery, too.

When you have an inflated sense of self-worth it must be hard to come up against a wall of objective facts that square with the reality everyone else sees. Thus narcissists and paranoiacs must concoct a narrative that seems to embrace those facts and yet tell the myth you want everyone to believe about yourself.

And so we have Jan Flory: a rigid, humorless, sometimes near-hysterical defender of an ideology that has placed California on the edge of financial insolvency. Think Greece.

Flory’s ridiculous muumuus and wooden beads are symbolic of a much more sinister problem: a fundamental dishonesty about herself and her corrupt mind set.

But don’t take my word for it. Lets examine Flory’s own Facebook rants. Like this latest, with added commentary by me.

DRIP, DRIP, DRIP

At 12:15 a.m. last night, the City Council took up the question of how to refund $7.3 million to people who overpaid their water bills in our city over the past 3 years. Mayor Sharon Quirk moved to continue the matter to the next city council meeting because of the late hour. Doug Chaffee concurred. Bruce Whitaker, Travis Kiger and Greg Sebourn voted to go forward no matter how late or how tired the council members. It also might have had something to do with the fact that the audience had dwindled to a handful by that time. So much for transparency and accountability.

Or it might have had something to do with the fact that hours and hours of time had been unnecessarily wasted by Quirk and Chaffee promoting the candidacy of Danny Hughes as Chief, despite the fact that the Council had already decided it wanted to do a wide recruitment instead of ramming home the inside goon. Transparency? Check. Accountability? Check.

Reality? If Flory is tired and can’t stay up past Murder She Wrote reruns on cable she shouldn’t be on any city council.

A little history first: To begin with, the water fee was never an “illegal water tax”.

Lie number one. Keep counting.

The water tax was first adopted in 1968 at 2% of the water bill. The purpose of the tax was to pass through to the ratepayers (you and me) the city’s cost of getting water to your tap. Fair enough. The tax increased to 10% in 1970. We had aging reservoirs, pumps and water lines that needed replacement and ongoing maintenance. The water fee was a way to do that.

Now that’s just another series of outright lies. But let’s not let the facts stand in the way of a good story, right? The 10% was originally cooked up to divert revenue into the General Fund to pay for the City Attorney and City Administrator. IT HAD NOTHING TO DO WITH ONGOING MAINTENANCE AND AGING INFRASTRUCTURE. Flory could have actually read the ordinance but that wouldn’t have been as fun making something up.

In any case there was never any accounting to see how bad the rip off really was, and in the old days water was dirt cheap, right?

In 1996, the California voters passed Proposition 218 which required there be a connection between a fee charged and the services rendered. In other words, you couldn’t just pull a number (like 10%) out of the air.

One truth accidentally tumbles out!

Proposition 218 was tested and upheld by the courts beginning in 2002.

Aha! Flory slips in a date to give herself an alibi for her own approval of the illegal tax for six years! Too bad that upon learning the truth she and her cohorts continued to steal the 10% each and every year for the next NINE YEARS. No talk about fixing the rip-off, apologizing to the ratepayers, trying to reclaim even a small mole hill of moral ground. Nope.

The Water Rate Study Committee was authorized by the OLD council long before the Recall to address concerns about the 10% charge to the Water Fund.

And at whose behest? Not city staff or you, Flory, we can be sure of that. It was political pressure that did it.

Ultimately, the study committee determined this summer that the city should have been charging in the neighborhood of 7% rather than 10% in order to comply with 218.

Another outright lie. The Committee determined no such thing. The staff-chosen consultant cooked up a phoney number to keep as much of the rip-off as possible including exorbitant rents paid to the City!Even Quirk said it was ridiculous!

The committee relied on the work of an independent financial consultant, Municipal Financial Services Group (MFSG), to determine the City’s cost in providing water to its customers, and outside legal counsel (Best, Best & Krieger) to make sure that the outcome comported with Proposition 218.

Independent? Now that’s just comical!

The results were even submitted to the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association that concurred with the methodology used in the study.

Wrong, again. But by now is anybody counting?

The NEW council majority threw all that out the window, disregarded the recommendations of the Water Rate Study Committee, and completely eliminated the “in lieu” fee. That will have the effect of reducing city revenues annually by $1.7 million which could have properly been charged by the city to bring water to our homes.

Let’s all gloss over the fact that no one has ever said a proper water rate shouldn’t cover costs of maintenance and infrastructure. If it doesn’t Flory has only her own beloved staff to blame – those same incompetent bureaucrats like Chis Meyer and Joe Felz who have let the City’s infrastructure go to hell as they feathered their own nests handsomely. In the meantime, the “in-lieu” fee had no legal rationale for existing since it wan an obvious triple dip. Step one was to get rid of it. Step two is find out what the true costs of running the water utility really is, and charge it to the ratepayers.

Because the city had charged its water customers 10% (rather than 7%), the Water Rate Study Committee found that the city had overcharged the rate payers the sum of $7.3 million over the last 3 years.

Once again, those were the cooked up findings of the hired “consultant.”

It recommended that the overpayment of the water fee be accomplished by an incremental transfer from the General Fund to the Water Fund to be used for infrastructure repairs,–something that desperately needs addressing. This would also avoid the City’s incurring debt to pay the debt.

Um, see comment above. How did the water infrastructure get so bad, Mrs. Flory? You were on the City Council for eight long years. Do want to take responsibility for that? What? Speak up!

What did the new Libertarian majority do? It voted to rebate the entire $7.3 million back to the rate payers. It is estimated that this will be a onetime payment of $100 to $400 per household depending on how much water was used during the 3 years.

The horror. Government giving back something it stole!

It’s an accounting nightmare for several reasons. The overpayment has to be calculated for each household in the city. Some residents have moved or died; thus, creating the dilemma of finding out where to send the money.

But Jan, are you saying your beloved staff can’t figure out a way to print and send out some checks? Hell, they manage to send out the water and trash bills every month.

Finally, the question of where the money is to come from must be determined. We don’t have enough in the General Fund to pay the lump sum. Staff suggested that a debt issuance might be necessary, with an estimated yearly debt service of $500,000.

Put away the violin Mrs. Flory. Step up and take your medicine. You and Bankhead and Jones and McKinley ripped us off for 15 years. YOU figure out how to make it right!

So now we not only have a decrease of $1.7 million in revenue, but we need to add $500,000 for debt service. This totals $2.2 million if you’re counting.

See, it’s all about government revenue, the altar at which the egregious muumuu clad priestess Flory worships. Yes we can count and we know whose balance sheet this belongs on – even though it’s on ours.

Last night, the council majority (Whitaker, Kiger and Sebourn) directed staff to find “creative ways” to pay off the debt such as selling off surplus properties. In other words, asking city staff to remove the rope the council majority had put around its own neck.

Wrong, again, Flory. They are asking city staff to do the right thing, and remove the rope YOU put around our necks for all those years.

It’s funny, in a sick sort of way, but the very types who used to bray the loudest about the need for “social justice” have been virtually silent in Fullerton in the wake of the Kelly Thomas murder at the hands of members of an out-of-control police department.

The graying establishment Democrats had been hiding behind their drawn chintz curtains, curled up in an intellectual fetal position on their plastic slip-covered Naugahyde sofas. It was just too scary and, well, controversial to say anything, let alone actually doanything.

Fortunately, others, such as Stephan Baxter, Marlena Carrillo and Lauren Becker are willing to keep up the pressure.

Here is a link to Becker’s website that reminds us exactly what a Culture of Corruption can do, and try to get away with, when left to its own devices. It also reminds us what we can do to push back against an entrenched system.

The bars stayed open and the bands played on…

Democrats like Jan Flory, and Molly McClanahan and Pam Keller didn’t say a word in the aftermath of the murder. No, they only got outraged when people outside their cozy little circle took the reins of government out of the hands of three incompetent old fools.

These people are a lot more worried about the fate of the bureaucracy than they are about the people of Fullerton. All of them.

]]>http://www.fullertonsfuture.org/2012/sooner-or-later-social-justice-for-kelly-thomas/feed/115We Get Mailhttp://www.fullertonsfuture.org/2012/we-get-mail-4/
http://www.fullertonsfuture.org/2012/we-get-mail-4/#commentsFri, 12 Oct 2012 14:15:09 +0000Joe Sipowiczhttp://www.fullertonsfuture.org/?p=34380I just picked up these missives from the FFFF in-box this morning. First this:

I know who Iwant to work for, and it isn’t you!

Hey, FFFFsters, I just want to point out the obvious. Jan Flory just got fourteen grand, cash, from the corrupt cop union. She also got ten grand from some land developer named Phelps. The rest of her dough came from “retired” individuals, most of them former public employees.

I was driving along Chapman a few days ago and saw Pam Keller on the corner of Harbor. She was holding up a sign promoting the candidacy of Rick Alvarez, a Republican! Here’s what I want to know. Why won’t the establishment Dems in this town support a real good candidate like Jane Rands? Why the Hell not? What is wrong with Keller, and Quirk and Flory and their ilk?

Are they so in bed with the FPOA thugs and baboons that they can’t recognize an authentic progressive? I guess that question answers itself.

- ACLU Mom

Good point, Mom. The Old Guard liberals in Fullerton don’t stand for anything, of course, except for the prerogatives conferred upon the department heads in City Hall (see first letter, above). Please address you questions to Keller herself and see if you can get an intelligible answer. Or you could ask this gentleman:

Seeing Jan Flory in action I have come to recognize a bitter, humorless shrew who happens to be a cheerleader for the department heads in City Hall and the worse their actions, the less accountability she requires.

Is she also losing her marbles? I don’t know. But I do know she wrote this weird entry on Facebook in which, among other things, admits that she employed “undocumented” domestics:

You’re going to love this one.

Last night I picked up a cryptic email message from O.Co. Register reporter, Tony Saavedra, asking me to call him today. We talked about 10:30 this morning. Apparently Tony had received a copy of a letter from an anonymous “concerned court employee” that had been sent to Shawn Nelson, our esteemed county supervisor. Tony said that Shawn had turned the letter over the District Attorney for investigation. WHAT! Tony wanted to know if I had been contacted by the D.A. WHAT!

My next 2 questions were: 1. Am I going to be arrested for something? That would be a bummer for the campaign, and 2. What was the letter about?

As described to me by Tony, the anonymous letter described an encounter that the writer had with me mid-August when I appeared in North Court with a 19-year-old friend of mine, Jackie, to deal with a traffic citation Jackie received the month before. Jackie was cited for an illegal left hand turn and driving without a license. The letter accused me of asking the court for some kind of special favor for Jackie. (I’m still trying to get a copy of the letter.)

Let’s back up. Jackie is one of the “Dream” kids. She was brought to this country by her undocumented parents when she was 8 and has lived here since then. Because Jackie has no documents herself, she (like hundreds of thousands) cannot get a driver’s license. I’ve known Jackie for 10 years, and she is a good girl who has done everything asked of her. She earned a 3.9 GPA in high school and has just finished her first year at Fullerton College with a 3.7 GPA. She volunteered as a poll worker for the June election. She has applied to work as a cadet for the City of Anaheim, but cannot get a job because she has no papers.

Once upon a time, Jackie’s parents worked in my home cleaning my house, and I developed a friendship with Jackie. Although her parents haven’t worked for me for a while, Jackie and I keep in touch. She was terrified of going to court by herself because she didn’t know if she might be arrested by ICE officials and deported. I offered to go to court with her to help out if I could.

When Jackie’s matter was called, I stood up with Jackie and notified the court that I was an attorney appearing to vouch for Jackie’s character and ask the court to cut Jackie a break if it had any discretion at all in the matter. The judge heard me out, and asked if Jackie was driving without a license. Jackie admitted that she was, and pled guilty to both counts. Jackie and I went downstairs where she had to pay nearly $600 for the fine.

This is what gets me. Based on the facts set forth above,

1. Why would Nelson (an attorney himself) turn such a letter over to the D.A. for investigation?

2. How did Tony Saavedra get the letter conveniently “leaked” to him?

3. Does this have anything to do with my being the frontrunner in the city council election? YA THINK! And more important,

4. Does this have anything to do with Shawn’s tight relationship with Tony Bushala who has been attacking me on his blog for the past 4 years.

Mr. Nelson, you owe me an explanation.

Apparently the progeny of these illegal aliens recently got a citation including driving without a license. What the girl’s GPA or employment status has to do with the ticket is anybody’s guess. It sounds like Flory did what the anonymous letter claims: asked the court for a favor.

Apparently Flory has got her corset in a twist; in her warped worldview she is the “frontrunner” and Shawn Nelson turned over an anonymous letter to the DA to derail her frontrunnership. I don’t know about any of that, but I do know that her obsessive paranoia about Tony Bushala doesn’t seem to fit the profile of a frontrunner – or even a completely balanced person.

I’m not a lawyer but I’m pretty sure Flory didn’t break any laws. However that letter should be turned over to the California Bar Association to let them decide if that was appropriate behavior.